Breakfast. The following morning.

"Are you all right, Jack?" Mrs. Kemper asked after doing a double-take as her son sat at the table. "You're up early."

"I couldn't sleep," the boy replied.

"Hmm? Why not?" Mrs. Kemper stopped pouring her cup of coffee and studied her child.

Shrugging was all she received in reply.

The time was five-forty. The morning hadn't dawned yet. It was still and dark as midnight outside. Mr. Kemper hadn't even left for work. Jack might have been a bit unpredictable, but his mother knew he wasn't this early of a riser. "You want to lie down on the sofa and I'll wake you up in forty-five minutes?"

Jack shook his head. "I'm fine."

Her son didn't look fine, Mrs. Kemper thought. He looked as if he'd been up all night. Like he was worried. But she didn't question him. Instead, she finished pouring her coffee and sat down across the table from him. Momentarily, Jack was afraid she'd begin the school conversation again, but his fears dispersed when she said, "Remember how you used to come into my and your father's room at night?" Softness in her words. Loving smile on her face.

Jack nodded, eyes on his mother's cup of coffee. Reflecting her smile without seeing hers.

"You came every night for about six months, slept on our floor. We were about to really worry, but then you just stopped." She paused, then added, "It was a silly phase, but I sort of liked it."

The boy at the table dropped his smile. That hadn't been a phase. It had been when he first started seeing the shadows in his room at night. Several years ago. He had probably been living with them since birth, but it was only when he and Kyle had split rooms that Jack really noticed them. It was as if they'd been less confident when Kyle was around. When Jack was on his own, they weren't interested in staying hidden.

"We knew it was because you and Kyle got your own rooms," Mrs. Kemper went on. "But you reacted so differently than he did."

Yes, Kyle had really appreciated being on his own. He'd even pasted a sign on his door reading "No Jack allowed," which his mother hadn't thought was very nice and made him take down.

"What were you so scared of, Jack? What were you seeing in that room of yours at night?" Mrs. Kemper leaned on her elbows, looking right at her son, even though he wasn't looking back. She was like Kyle, always wanting to believe him and trying to understand, but they were never able to completely do either.

Their worlds were too real. Too concrete. Too unwilling to let things slip through the layers.

Seeing that Jack wasn't going to answer, his mother sighed in benign acceptance, slowly turned her coffee mug in her hands, and said, "Where are you, Jack? Where do you wander?"

Not really hearing her, the boy pulled himself out of his mind and said, "I don't like that field out there." He looked at his mother for the first time since she'd started talking to him.

"I know," she said. Another sigh, another turn of her mug. "I don't know why. One reason we liked this house was because of all the room back there. Kyle has the whole place to run around and practice in."

"There's something about it."

"Something like the grass needs to be mowed? I've been getting at your father to take care of that. Now that Kyle's started up soccer again, we need to clear the weeds. Maybe this weekend we can convince him to get out there and mow. It's not as hot as it was during August."

Jack shook his head. "It's not that. It's something else."

"What, honey?"

"I don't know . . . just . . . just something."

Mrs. Kemper got up and took out another coffee mug from the cabinet, hearing her husband start down the stairs. "Unless 'something' gets more specific, there's nothing I can do about it."